Bin British Gas – put energy in public hands, by Morten Thaysen

Bin British Gas – put energy in public handsCrossposted from Left Foot Forward, by Morten Thaysen

It is high time for a radical change to our energy system, writes Morten Thaysen

Owner of British Gas, Centrica, is holding their AGM in London on the 12 May. And this year there will be plenty for shareholders of the UK’s biggest energy supplier to discuss. In 2013 they lost a staggering 362,000 customers to cheaper and smaller suppliers, received more than 1.2m customer complaints and then had to absorb the findings of a recent poll showing that 83 per cent of the population now think the energy system is broken.

There is indeed good reason to think the energy system is broken: last year British Gas earned more than £7m in profits every day, but still saw it necessary to raise it’s prices by over 9 per cent at a time when over 10,000 people died last winter from cold homes, when 20 per cent of households are in debt to their supplier, and when about 1 in 4 people are forced to ‘choose’ between heating or eating

It is high time for a radical change to our energy system. Simply breaking up the Big Six into smaller profit-first companies or imposing a temporary ‘price freeze’ is not enough. Both the poverty and climate crisis make it abundantly clear that we desperately need green energy that everyone can afford, and the Big Six has made it abundantly clear that private energy companies are not capable of providing this. We need energy in community and public hands.

Therefore Fuel Poverty Action will be protesting against British Gas at their AGM to demand an end to profiteering energy companies at the cost of dignity and lives and a transition to democratically controlled energy, green, and affordable energy.